Paisaje minado
Installation. Single-channel video projection on wall with original soundtrack, cabinet with six laser drawings and a digital copy on wood board and iron structure, 2013
This work addresses the disconcerting underground world of the mining area along the rivers Nalón and Caudal as a mined landscape, slowly destroyed and (physically, economically and socially) consumed and exhausted by mining exploitations. This interior landscape full of hidden mines is like the shadow of the morphology of the contemporary green blanket of Asturias of which we can barely imagine what lies beneath. The striking headframes that rise above the shrubs and trees are really just small artefacts in comparison with the huge infrastructures and constructions below the surface, the dozens of shafts, chimneys and hundreds of kilometres of galleries hidden under the mountains of Asturias. For those from the outside world who wish to venture into these controversial hidden landscapes today, all they have at their disposal are their imagination, technical plans and the experiences of the people who lived in this complex place. As such, Paisaje minado, dibujando la destrucción de otro tiempo [Mined landscape, drawing the destruction of another time] represents the cultural landscape of the mining area of Asturias through a recreation of old maps, working plans, exploitation diagrams and technical documentation coming from geological archives, topographers and mining engineers and, as could not be otherwise, the testimony of the men who have “mined” with their hands and their bodily efforts the hundreds of “coal deposits” coming from another geological time.
Acknowledgments: Cecilia Sancho, Marcos Martínez Merino, Rocío García & Juan Palacios (Asociación Cultural Santa Bárbara), Pedro Fandos, Nano Méndez.
Produced by: Plataforma 0. Centro de producción de LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón.
